Plant Labels You Can Write And Erase

Over the winter Allsop Home & Garden sent me two packs of plants labels you can write and erase. While you can make your own plant and seedling labels/markers out of recyclable materials, sometimes it is nice to have a polished garden item or two around.

The plant labels themselves are a sturdy rubber material that is pre-printed with illustrated silhouettes of a number of herbs and ornamental garden plants. You can write the names of your plants or seedlings on the label, if the time comes when you need to change what you wrote you can rub it out with an eraser. The packs of plants labels also come with miniature shepherd hooks, which are also well-constructed.

Tulip Viruses

During the 17th century the Netherlands were taken over by what is called "Tulip mania." Shortly after being introduced tulips became a symbol of status and a way to showcase wealth publicly. Semper Augustus, with its red and white streaked petals, is famously remembered as being the most expensive tulip sold during the "Tulip mania." At the time it wasn't known that the spectacular colors in the petals of tulips were caused by a tulip virus. Tulip breaking virus was carried by the green peach aphid and while the virus caused beautiful flowers, it also caused weak bulbs that died slowly. Anna Pavord, author of Bulb, tells us of similar speculative bubble happening in England with snowdrops today. Not quite to the extent of "Tulip mania" but it is interesting to see that we're all more than happy to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Direct Sowing Nasturtium Seeds in the garden

This week I finally got around to sowing my Nasturtium "Spitfire" seeds in the garden. I find Nasturtium seeds to be so easy and carefree that I can't bring myself to starting them indoors or in a seed starting kit/greenhouse  like the ghetto greenhouse, newspaper pots, paper tube seed pots or even in plastic baggies.

The direct sowing method is definitely the way to go with these annual seeds in my experience. I just take one of the seeds and sink it into the ground with my index finger and move on until I am out of seeds. To give myself a challenge for the seed GROW project I started a www.GardenBloggers.com I decided to pre-soak some of my nasturtium seeds and direct sow the rest straight of out the seed packet.